Why Delayed Entry is Best (Forex News Trading)

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Relax, you're not missing the spike - plenty of room to the day's central pivot point.

House Extends Homebuyer Credit Another 3 Months

Homebuyers would get an extra three months to complete their purchases and qualify for a generous tax credit under a bill overwhelmingly passed by the House on Tuesday.

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4 Mistakes We Make When Blogging

1. Going Off Topic-One of the unfortunate things that many of us do too often is start off our blog posts with one idea in mind; then by the time we finish writing what we thought we had to say, we realize that the post has taken a completely different direction. While some readers may forgive you for this, it is usually better to err on the side of caution and avoid any confusion. Stick to the topic and keep it simple.
2. Rambling-Following closely in the footsteps of going off topic is rambling. Often times, blog posts fall apart due to the fact that the author is digressing about something or the other. How does this translate to the reader? Readers will usually quite reading what the author has to say before they even finish whatever it was they were rambling on about because their writing comes across as having little or no meaning. Again, stay on topic.
3. Complaining-Complaining in posts is usually a no-no, unless you are somehow tying it into some bigger point-which you had better reach quick. Remember, you want to keep your readers engaged. You can get away with complaining on a personal blog or journal, but for a professional site and for building credibility, this can be catastrophic.
4. Photographs- Imagery is important when blogging. People like pictures because they like to feel a visual connection to what you are talking about. Photographs serve many different purposes such as tying a piece of writing together to help promote a deeper understanding; or they can be used in place of words to help illustrate a point. Often times, bloggers use photos to help break up the text and give their readers’ eyes a break. However, just make sure that you are careful about the type of photo you use as well as the size. Both need to be relevant to the amount of text on the page as well as related to what you are talking about. For example, if your focus of your blog post is based around an image, then your image will be bigger, etc.

10 Reasons Why Your Analytics Are Failing & 13 Tools To Help

Web Analytics are a key indicator to the health and performance of any website, but online marketers often get lost in the complexities and details, forgetting how important analytics actually are and why.

Analytics can provide a wealth of information but marketers often look at high level indicators such as: top content, bounce rates, entrance sources and keywords without tying it all together. In most cases, there is a tremendous amount of insight that can be used to make smarter marketing decisions, but most companies barley scratch the surface. At the OMS Minneapolis event last week  Adam Proehl gave an excellent presentation on analytics failures and successes. I’ve taken my notes from that presentation and combined them with my own opinions to create this list.

10 reasons why your web analytics are failing:

You speak numbers to non-number people.

It takes a numbers person to dig though large amounts of analytics data, figure things out, and draw conclusions. However, most people aren’t “numbers” people.

Many marketers like charts and clear, action orientated data. Charts are good, numbers in red and green help, and so does simplification. Don’t present tabular data just because it make sense to you. Try and think about who you’re presenting the information to and how they like to consume information. Some people like tables, others like graphs. As online marketers make an effort to understand the audience on the web they’re trying to reach, so should they understand the internal audiences that they report results to.

The statistics are fuzzy.

It’s easy to combine different pieces of data and come out with a great conclusion, even if they don’t go together.

For example, did you know that Michael Jordan and I have a combined total of 6 NBA championships?

While that statement is true, the conclusion is a bit skewed. Yes, Michale’s 6 plus my 0 do equal 6, the fact is that that I didn’t do any of the work for those championships, but I’m still getting the credit as I was included in the statement.

In analytics it’s important to break out the data so that it makes sense, not just so it looks good. It’s easy to combine two pieces of information in ways that make things look really good, but in reality, is something being hidden?

The averages are flawed.

Averages are great unless there is a major spike or dip. Then they have a tendency to skew the data a bit too much.

Based on the graph above, you could say that we’re averaging 1652 people from StumbleUpon a day. But in reality, most days there were less than 50. The big spike just screwed up the average.  As quickly as that spike came, it can also disappear and making decisions based on the daily average isn’t a best practice.

Sometimes things just don’t work.

There are lots of things that can go wrong with the analytics from a website and that has to be taken into account. The tracking code could be implemented incorrectly, maybe some special tagging was setup improperly, there could be issues with site architecture or maybe there are just things that are out of our control.

Analytics isn’t perfect and the reporting is never going to be 100% accurate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the numbers are wrong.

The important thing is to fix the issues you can and work with the numbers you have.

You don’t understand the customer.

Why are people visiting our site? What are they doing while they are here? What stage of the buying cycle are they in?

Thinking that you know your customers is one thing, but you really need to watch their behavior and see what they are actually doing.

Maybe visitors are focused on research or maybe they can’t find what they’re looking for when they get to your site. These are things analytics can tell you if you look and once you know what your customer is doing, you can modify your site to fulfill their needs.

You don’t connect the conversion dots.

Getting visitors to the site is one step. The next step is making sure you have content that is going to satisfy their need. As stated above, analytics can help with this, but once prospects fill out the contact form, what happens next?

How many decisions are made by looking at top level analytics alone? Someone has to tie leads back to the website to determine what is working and what isn’t.

For example, in a B2B situation, a whitepaper download may be bringing in lots of leads, but none are qualified. Maybe there is a CTA (call to action) form that is bringing in few leads, but they convert very well. Analytics can’t tell you what happens with a lead after filling out a form, and connecting that data is very important.

You don’t dig deep enough.

Looking at one metric in analytics and making a decision seems like a good idea unless you’re not seeing the whole picture.

A good example would be bounce rates to a landing page. Just because the bounce rates are high, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. You need to dig into the data and find out the conversion rate as well.  Changing a landing page because the bounce rate is higher than normal but that also has a higher than normal conversion rate may result in lost sales.

You don’t tie in outside data.

Marketers should be looking at other online and offline marketing efforts and tie them into web analytics wherever they can.  Ideally, an online marketing program should track different sources for different outcomes such as: people from Twitter to conversion, knowing which conversions came from email campaigns and what offsite marketing tactics are working.

You don’t take the time.

Analytics isn’t easy. It’s not something anyone can do in an hour a day (except maybe those that read this book of course). If website marketers really want to get valuable information out of analytics, they need to invest time and resources into talent that can make that happen.

Analytics can seem complex and yes, it takes time and talent to make sense of them, but in the end analytics can paint a picture of how users are interacting with a site, what the user behavior is, and point out ways to make your site more successful and profitable.

Bonus: 13 analytics tools to help you out.

• ShareThis – Social sharing button that can tie data into Goggle Analytics.
• Snip and Tag – Firefox extension that allows you to easily copy a URL and tag it with Google Analytics code.
• GA? – Firefox extension that quickly shows if Google Analytics is installed on the page or not.
• Better Google Analytics – Firefox extension that enhances Google Analytics.
• Enhanced Google Analytics – Another Firefox extension that enhances Google Analytics.
• Twitalyzer – Analytics for social relationships.
• Bit.ly – URL shortening with analytics.
• Google URL Builder – A way of tagging URLs with Google Analytics code so they can be tracked on external sites.
• Excellent Analytics – Microsoft Excel plugin to pull Google Analytics data directly into Excel.
• Site Scan GA – Scans a website to find out what pages have analytics installed and which ones don’t.
• Web Analytics Solution Profiler/Debugger (WASP) – Firefox plugin that debugs analytics.
• Crazy Egg – Heat mapping tools that allow you to visually understand user behavior.
• ClickTail – Heat mapping tools that also track where uses are when they bail on a form.

What are some of your favorite web analytics tools?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
10 Reasons Why Your Analytics Are Failing & 13 Tools To Help | http://www.toprankblog.com

Penny Stock Investing – Penny Stock Trading Explained (Pt.1)

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Forex System – Pin Bars -$10000 Profit

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How I Get Wealthy Affiliate for Free

My bonus 15 minute video will show you how I get Wealthy Affiliate for free. Yes, sign-up to Wealthy Affiliate through me and I can show you how to get Wealthy Affiliate free and then continue building your online empire from there. Let me explain it all to you.

The screen shot of the report below shows you 2 years worth of data Jan 2008 – Dec 2009. Now, my membership has cost me only $39* per month over the two years (thats $39 x 24 = $936). However, I have made $4402 in commissions with them. That’s a profit of $3466, and I still get paid commissions automatically each month without having to work for it any more.

So not only am I getting it free, but I’m also profiting from the Wealthy Affiliate program. Do you want to know how you can do it too? Then I highly recommend you check out Wealthy Affiliate University for yourself and find out more about their Super affiliate program. If you sign up through me then I’ll give you instant access to my video that will show you how I get Wealthy Affiliate for free!

These results I show you here are not typical of the average user though. Why? Because 95% of people will just give up before they even start. Remember, this is not an ‘over night get rich scheme’, but just look at it this way; would you rather be working for the sole pay day at the end of the month or recurring income for the rest of your life?

Choices is always yours. I recommend trying Wealthy Affiliate for yourself today and grab my bonuses to see exactly how you can start getting Wealthy Affiliate for free too.

* As of June 2010, the value offered by Wealthy Affiliate has increased significantly, hence a price increase was always on the cards. When I joined I secured the monthly rate of $39 per month. Now Wealthy Affiliate is $97 per month and cheaper if you sign up for a year. It’s actually still considerably cheaper than some programs out there that go for $5,000 per year plus and offer much less that Wealthy Affiliate does. Having said that what you can earn from Wealthy Affiliate has more than doubled so it’s all relative, meaning you have an even better chance of getting Wealthy Affiliate free now and profiting more now than ever before.

Lee Odden On SEO And The Social Web – OMS Minneapolis Keynote

Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing CEO gave the opening keynote of Online Marketing Summit Minneapolis.  Lee spoke on the intersection of SEO and social media and provided key takeaways for companies on achieving success.

As the social web and search engines integrate and innovate tighter, the intersection between search and social is growing more meaningful daily.  Following is a summation of this info-packed presentation:

What would happen if your Google traffic disappeared tomorrow?  What impact would that have on your marketing and your business?  For many, this could be disastrous.  This highlights the importance of diversifying your brand’s referring sources and share of voice around the web.

Search and social are intersecting in many ways:  when you look at a comparison of the top search engines, more and more of the engines themselves are on social platforms, and more of the results on the big engines are social.

Think about amplifying the results you are getting from natural SEO by amplifying your content through social channels.

Google dominates search, but should it dominate your marketing?

Lee shared some stats that help support the diversification of your traffic and digital influence:

• 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, according to Nielsen, but only 14% trust advertisements according to Larry Weber
• Facebook added more than 200 million users in less than a year according to the Facebook timeline
• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the US
• 2^nd most popular search engine isn’t Yahoo, it’s YouTube according to comScore
• 80% of companies use social media for recruitment, 95% of those are LinkedIn

The stats paint a clear picture:  that social is vital to integrate with search and your marketing program overall.  According to SEMPO, 35% of B2B companies integrate social media and search engine marketing programs – is your brand?

HubSpot is a great social/SEO example – they receive 20,000 leads a month from inbound efforts.

What about search and social as it integrates with PR and media relations?  To research stories:

• 89% of journalists use blogs
• 65% use social networks
• 52% use Twitter

Jon Gordon from NPR noted:

I use search engines on almost every story.  I use social networks to find additional sources as well as for the story idea generation and story feedback.

How to leverage SEO for marketing and PR:

If you already have a keyword glossary, that can be shared with PR to leverage for their content creation to be optimized for journalists.

How do SEO and social media intersect?

Add a layer of search to your social activity:  are you leveraging keywords across your social web participation?  If not, you should be.  Give your keyword glossaries to your social media marketing and PR team to use across marketing efforts.  Cumulatively this leads to better visibility not just in Google but in social search as well.

One of the problems of social media and SEO is that they are usually put in silos within an organization.  But, you can bring them together to amplify results.  You can’t afford not to combine social and SEO.  In fact, if you are in a competitive category, it’s difficult to compete if you aren’t engaged.  As just one example, it’s difficult to acquire lots of high quality, organic links unless you can promote great content to a significant number of people.

Ecommerce is social

Target, 1-800 Flowers, and other e-commerce brands are going social.  They are integrating their online purchasing with social sites in order to tap into networks along with purchasing.  Companies that are doing this type of activity are training their customers to make social a part of the purchasing process.

Customer service is social

Large brands are leveraging social tools for CRM purposes and sales opportunities.  All you need to do to see the opportunity is query a topic customers are seeking information on and you can be the one to respond.

Most importantly, people are social and people search.  As long as there is content that can be sorted, there is an opportunity to optimize it.

Is social a threat to search?  No – search isn’t going anywhere.  Social sites are popular but according to both consumer data and the nature of the web they are not a threat to search.

4 keys to Social SEO:

Listening, content, socialize, measurement

Listening – understand the channels so you can make smart decisions about your tactics.  Listening also provides you social keyword research to mine data from your target audience.  If you have ever created a social listening report, you know it’s keyword-based and the value of understanding the language audiences use.

Content – The thing that makes social or SEO fantastic is content.  If you don’t have a great message, you don’t have anything.  Take stock of content assets in order to be able to maintain consistency with communications.  After inventory, you can sync that up with an editorial plan.  Skipping this step can lead to failure:  for example, many create blogs and run out of things to say quite quickly.  Without a plan, it’s easy to get stuck.  Next, map your content to those social keywords developed to maximize visibility in search.

Socialize – give to get, and grow a network of relevant people.  Even if you have great content, no one will know to link to it or share it unless you promote it.

Distribution channels are essential – create content around the needs of your customers and send through distribution channels that are independent of Google – for example, RSS, email, social, media/PR and contributed articles.  The kicker is if done effectively, your performance in Google skyrockets.

Cycle of social and SEO:

Measure – get social monitoring tools and social analytics in place in order to understand and get feedback on your content and participation.  Look at the performance of your content and your competition’s content in order to provide insight.

Marketo (a TopRank client) as an example created a social SEO strategy that focused on keywords and content their customer finds valuable as opposed to limiting themselves purely to keywords describing the product.

3 things you can do now:
1) Establish a listening program

2) Implement a content marketing strategy

3) Leverage social media marketing campaign management tools (which will be explored in a future post at TopRank Blog).

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Lee Odden On SEO And The Social Web – OMS Minneapolis Keynote | http://www.toprankblog.com

Home Mortgage Rates Hit A New Low

Rates fell this week to the lowest level on records dating to 1971, giving consumers added incentive to lock in low payments for home purchases and refinanced loans. The average rate for 30-year fixed loans sank to 4.69 percent, Freddie Mac said.

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